[links] Link salad’s uncle has a country place that no one knows about

The Bitter End — We turn to doctors to save our lives — to heal us, repair us, and keep us healthy. But when it comes to the critical question of what to do when death is at hand, there seems to be a gap between what we want doctors to do for us, and what doctors want done for themselves. Oddly enough, I had a long conversation just yesterday with my doctor about precisely this topic. (Via Steve Buchheit.)

How Reagan Promoted Genocide — Despite their frequent claims to the contrary, the evidence is now overwhelming that Reagan and his advisers had a clear understanding of the extraordinary brutality going on in Guatemala and elsewhere, based on their own internal documents. As they prepared to ship military equipment to Guatemala, White House officials knew that the Guatemalan military was engaged in massacres. I’m not actually convinced Reagan knew much of anything, as his Alzheimer’s was fully on display well before his second term (see the first presidential debate of the 1984 election cycle for evidence of this), but it’s unsurprising that this man is the patron saint of the party that brought us the unmitigated disaster of the Iraq war. (Thanks to goulo.)